


Empedocles Clerve

by IncurableNecromantic



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, also very unethical psychological behavior, but y'know everybody has an off day, encouragement of suicide, really just an awful lot of suicide, suicidal ambition
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-24
Updated: 2016-08-12
Packaged: 2018-07-26 13:30:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7575784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IncurableNecromantic/pseuds/IncurableNecromantic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is no dignity in death.  Dr. Empedocles Clerve aims to change that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Clerve Ecloses

The peppy jingling of a cell phone alarm split the tranquil quiet of Gallery Eight, startling the tourists who peered at the paintings of Renaissance babies in uncomfortable poses. The tinny Calypso beat bounced off of the high pale walls and ricocheted around the sunny room, flying in the faces of bearded saints and thoughtful virgins.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” muttered a man’s voice. The cell phone was dropped on the marble floor, making a distinctive rubber-padded _clack_ before it could be retrieved and shut off.  Fumbling fingers found it, dropped it again, and at last recovered the phone.  “Crap-sack. Damn it.”

The man who spoke was a not-handsome person, aged somewhere between thirty-seven and forty-three. His brown eyes were deeply set in his head and his lips were twisted in a shallow frown beneath his thin moustache. He was sitting in front of the painting of The Martyrdom of Saint Lucy, a sketchpad open on his lap. The rendering of the martyr’s death was only sketched, and not quite faithfully reproduced -- something more diabolical about the flames, perhaps, or the plate with disembodied eyeballs.

The man swept his sketch carelessly into a leather satchel bag and slipped out towards the main hallway. His three-piece grey seersucker suit stood out among the shorts and yoga pants of the tourists, and his dark brown leather sandals made a faint slapping sound as he hurried through the rotunda and out of the museum doors.

He trotted like a showpony down the front steps, around the block, and out into the city. Dodging trash cans and young professionals and legging it against a diminishing crosswalk signal, he approached a small restaurant and muscled his way through the chattering people waiting in line. Those in the know stood at the back, thumbing across their phones and waiting for bags of pre-ordered food to go.

“Order for Greg? Gracias, señor. Order for Jen? Thank you, señorita. Order for--" The server stopped short. "Uh. Eh-- Emp. Emped..."

The man’s frown twitched a little.

"Please don't hesitate on the second and third syllables, darling,” the man said. “You’ll only make it worse."

The waiter didn't even attempt to say the name. "Six tacos al pastor?"

The man's mouth slipped into a grimace that threatened to fall off the right side of his face. "That’s right."

The waiter forked the tacos over. The man looked at the bag and did not move to take it.

"Empedocles," the man said. Then he enunciated. "Em-peh-doh-klees. It has a musical quality. Can you hear it?"

"Sir--"

"Like a circumflex. The 'oh' is razor sharp and then you ease in." The man swept a finger in the prescribed pattern. "EmpEHDOHkleees. Get it? ‘Ease’ in? It's a mnemonic device."

"Six tacos al pastor," the waiter insisted.

The man squinched up his unhandsome face but took the bag. "Four syllables. Every one of them nice. I know you can do it."

"Order for Carolyn?"

The man, one Empedocles Clerve, took his six tacos al pastor and watched the waiter go on. He restrained his scowl, poured himself three small tubs of salsa from the salsa bar in a haughty and dignified manner, and decamped to a nearby park.

It was June. Patches of the park reeked with urine and even in the heat of the day there were tourists wandering around, looking at statues and clustering up to take pictures. Off the central path there were lines of old trees, making cutouts of soft shade where the hot air was less densely packed. A homeless octogenarian in bright teal sneakers was sitting upright and dozing on a bench set slightly back from the walkway. Fat carpenter bees wandered drunkenly nearby.

Clerve nudged the woman awake and plopped himself down beside her. She stretched and Clerve handed her three of the tacos.

"Al pastor?" she demanded, peeling up the taco wrapper. "You goddamn snake!"

"The carnitas have been dry lately. I have your best interests at heart." He shoved half a taco into his mouth.

"You didn't get sour cream."

"Cholesterol."

"Far more dangerous to your health in the short term to fail to bring me sour cream, Clerve. Might fill up your mailbox with some, for spite."

Clerve wrinkled his nose. "Christ, Hyacinth, how about you just break my leg instead?"

Hyacinth smiled and stretched her own legs, bright teal feet pointing and flexing. “I can have it done, you know. Rocko owes me a few favors.”

“The dear old boy. I’ll tip him myself if he can ice me before my two o’clock.”

“What’s got you in a snit?” Hyacinth asked. She nibbled delicately at her taco, letting it drip on the brick sidewalk. “I thought you gave yourself the morning off. You should be crapping sunshine.”

“The taco people refuse to learn my name.”

“It is a stupid name; that has to be admitted. Is that really all? Your two o’clock deadline seems oddly specific.”

“There’s also John MacFuckingDougall.” Clerve demolished the rest of his taco. He licked his hand, tasting a little residual charcoal from his sketching, and went for the second taco. “Hence the morning off.”

“How can a man named MacFuckingDougall make anyone unhappy? I’m smiling just thinking about it. Is it hyphenated? Are the MacFuckings an old family?”

“I hate him.”

“Well, I don’t think I can engineer a hit before you have to go in and attend to your problem child. Rocko’s got math class this afternoon and I don’t want him to risk his studies. You might have to take this into your own hands. You could drown yourself in the duck pond over there, but it’s kind of filled with duck shit…”

Clerve stood up. Hyacinth yanked him back down.

“Ass.”

Clerve heaved a sigh and followed it with a discreet belch. “Light a candle for me in the sacristy at the Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Resignation, would you? I require celestial intervention.”

“Like alien abduction?”

“Ideally.”

“Customer service isn’t easy,” Hyacinth said in sympathetic tones, “but it’s the jewel of your profession, and indeed your personality.”

Empedocles Clerve mimed sticking a finger down his throat and shoveled the second and third taco into his maw.

* * *

Sitting in the leather armchair in the dim and semi-soothing confines of Dr. Empedocles Clerve’s office, Mr. John MacDougall declared himself to be dismayed.

It was a state of affairs ancient of days. As he told it, Mr. John MacDougall had been unsatisfied from birth, uncoddled by sires, bullied in school, passed over for recognition in studies and work, solidly middling in performance of all kinds, frequently rejected of women, at last rejecting in his turn the love of his very serviceable but unprepossessing wife for an openly mercenary and unflattering affair with a coworker, which caused him deep feelings of guilt and helplessness. Mr. MacDougall had had one solid stroke of luck in his lifetime and it had made him rich, the sort of rich that befitted ambitious and enterprising tycoons but which sat like a drugstore suit coat on a creature who was all seeth and very little spine.

For two hours every week for the last two years Dr. Empedocles Clerve had found himself serving as the worm whisperer.

“I’m not boring you, am I?” Mr. MacDougall asked. His tone was that astonishing mixture of base servility and haughty affront that only certain personalities in the advantaged stages of insufferability could truly master. Clerve had dared to pause in the motions of his pen.

“Only considering the depth of your point,” Clerve replied. “Please, go on. You were talking about the tray of cold cuts.”

Mr. MacDougall lowered his eyes. “There isn’t much more to say about them, doctor.”

“I believe I understand the facts,” Clerve said, wondering to himself where Death and that sting of his were. “But tell me, how did that make you feel?”

Mr. MacDougall recounted how it made him feel. Distressed; hurt; ignored; dismissed; abandoned; humiliated in public, before coworkers; impotent (this confessed in a whisper rather warmer than was entirely appropriate, sending a chill through the depths of Clerve’s very soul); shocked; rejected; abused. He’d called his Support System of Understanding Persons to discuss it, but he was so aware that they despaired of him and wished him dead every time they heard the telephone ring. Because no one understood. No one really understood. No one really could. Worse yet -- perhaps no one really would. Why would they want to?

Empedocles Clerve often sketched during his appointments. He had one of those minds that could parrot back an interlocutor’s last few sentences without having to digest them, and when combined with the implicit appearance that the patient’s insights were worth recording, the whole ruse probably boosted the patient’s self-esteem.

Today, Clerve drew Mr. MacDougall’s head on a pike. He had a good head for a pike. Like the rest of him it was rather wan and thin, but it bulbed around the temples and it wiggled uncertainly on his limp chickenish neck in a way that a good strong pike could do a lot to help.

Mr. MacDougall mewled. “Sometimes I think it would just be nicer to end it all, you know? To just be done with it and never have to face anyone or anything ever again.”

That was a nice plan. Clerve approved of energetic, summary action. “I wouldn't entertain that notion, Mr. MacDougall. Self-destruction is never a truly sustainable life plan.”

“Those new little suicide chambers do look so comforting, though,” Mr. MacDougall muttered. “I passed one on the way here. A young woman gave me a brochure. They promise it’s quick and completely painless!”

Mr. MacDougall offered the brochure out for consideration. It had been warped into a cone by an anxious fist. There was a smiling couple on the cover, standing in front of one of the clean, sleek execution pods and making an ‘OK’ with their right hands. Clerve was irresistibly reminded of the cover of a pizza box.

“Well, perhaps you will die painlessly and perhaps you won’t,” Clerve said, handing the brochure back. “I can’t imagine what kind of feedback the engineers hope to get from satisfied customers. I would be grieved at the thought of you becoming another statistic, especially if it were a drive-through death. Don’t you agree that that’s a little beneath your dignity, Mr. MacDougall?”

“Yes…” Mr. MacDougall said sadly. “I’m so tired of being just a number. But I just don’t know what else I can do!”

Clerve had a list of activities and assignments Mr. MacDougall had declined to perform. He didn’t trot them out now.

“If I have understood you right,” said Clerve, “some of the dissatisfaction is coming from your interpersonal relationships. What strategies have you used to tackle those issues?”

“Oh, I can’t deal with relationships right now. Ever since I started betraying Cindy’s trust, I haven't really been able to face her, not even in bed.”

“Mm.”

“I don't want to be alone. And I have tried to communicate with people! But it just never works, no matter what I try.”

“How has approaching them calmly but directly about your feelings and desires worked? Perhaps in a non-confrontational, one-on-one setting?”

Clerve’s blood pressure was rising. He hated talking to Mr. MacDougall. If he could get his patient into a monologue again, he could run the clock on this hellish appointment and maybe break a teacup in the wastebasket when Mr. MacDougall finally left.

Mr. MacDougall cringed. “Oh, I can’t do that. They wouldn’t understand. And it would be a show of weakness, to tell them what I think. Don't you think it's really better to work on my me?”

Cleve moved his head in a noncommittal but faintly encouraging way, but Mr. MacDougall still sat there with an expectant look on his face. Damn it.

“Part of becoming your own self does involve your interactions with people in the world around you. And they aren’t mind-readers, of course.” Clerve smiled. “They need to hear it from you. They can’t know what you won’t tell them.”

Mr. MacDougall’s face clouded over.

“I know they don’t want to hear it,” he protested. “They don’t really care! They laugh about me, secretly, behind my back, and to express anything would only increase their derision! They don’t understand! They won’t understand!”

“I see.” Clerve felt himself fraying. “And are you certain that this is how they really--”

“And to be perfectly honest, doctor, I’m beginning to think you don’t get it either!”

Clerve blinked several times. “Excuse me?”

Mr. MacDougall was glowering. His fists were tight. “You claim you want to hear how I really feel about one thing or another but all you do is sit there and natter back at me about all the things I’m doing wrong!”

“My sincere apologies, Mr. MacDougall, I didn't--”

Mr. MacDougall shook with the vehemence of his feelings. “You sit there so smug in your chair, so sure you know what's wrong with me without even bothering to listen to me or pay me any attention! You don't even want to understand how awful it is, to not even be able to really communicate how it even really _feels_! I don’t even know what I’m paying you for, anymore!”

It was a bolt from the blue. Clerve stared at Mr. John MacDougall for several seconds. He didn’t blink.

His mouth opened without input from his brain.

“Why you shiteating little fuck,” Clerve said. It came out beautifully, with the kind of pronunciation they ought to teach in schools.

Mr. MacDougall’s eyes started nearly out of his head. “I beg your pardon?”

Empedocles Clerve, or at least bits of him, begged his own pardon too. He wasn’t quite sure where he was going with this.

“You pathetic little suffering weasel,” Clerve went on. “You’ve been coming to me for two years to deliver this endless stream of insipid self-loathing shit, and you have the heretofore-undetected balls to accuse me of failing to be patient and understanding with you?”

“I do not--”

Clerve charged on. “I’ve recommended communications coaching, psychological retreats, psychiatrists with excellent pedigrees, spiritual advisors, lifestyle changes, pills, cryotherapy, journaling, socializing, exercise, entertainments, therapy animals, Eat-Pray-Loving it to the coast of fucking Trincomalee! You don’t want to get better, you unbearable ass-pimple! All you want is someone who will listen to you bitch and moan!”

Mr. MacDougall’s dander was up. He had gone a blotchy red. “All I want is a little personalized attention!”

"Personalized attention?" Clerve sneered. "You mean more than someone listening to your whinging, cringing nonsense for hours on end? For two hours a week, two years running, literally 208 hours of my life that I can never have restored to me?"

"Yes, but I have to pay you for it!" Mr. MacDougall snapped. Clerve had clearly snapped as well, and he knew it, but from a distant, callous place of knowing where it didn’t really bother him too much.

"Of COURSE you need to pay me to listen to you, Mr. MacDougall. I am not your friend! This is a simulacrum of a meaningful interpersonal relationship, in which completely one-sided emotional sharing and support is facilitated by the exchange of money in lieu of basic fucking consideration! And even if it weren’t, you’re not pleasant to talk to! You have no interests, no ambitions, no desires beyond to be listened to and frantically assured that you are good enough.”

Clerve let out a little hack of a laugh. “Well, I've tried to assure you that you are good enough but we both know that isn't true! If you won't believe me when I lie to you and you won't do any of the things I've suggested that you do to improve your quality of life, then you're just going to stay the same awful little twerp you are now!”

“You are the worst psychologist I have ever--”

“And if you’re going to remain the same you might as well take your damn brochure and go to one of those suicide chambers! Or put a gun to your head and pull the damned trigger, for the love of God!"

"Well, maybe I will!" Mr. MacDougall said, looking close to tears.

"Why don't you! Or hang yourself! Or drown! Or-- or better yet--" Clerve sprang out of his armchair and lurched to his desk, tossing notebooks over his shoulder, scattering pens, digging for information. "If you're going to be so small, so incredibly, disdainfully tiny, you might as well put yourself in a box and wither up!"

Mr. MacDougall's miserable frown became an expression of confusion. "Whu...a...a box?"

"Yes!"

Clerve tore through one of his notebooks and shoved the image from last month's sketch in his patient's face. It depicted another form of Mr. MacDougall’s potential demise.

"See! I've plotted it out. Take a half a bottle of acetaminophen and three sleeping pills and fold yourself up into a trunk and suffocate!"

Mr. MacDougall squinted at the notebook. "You drew…”

“Yes, I drew it! What else was I supposed to do with the time I seem bound and determined to waste on you?”

Mr. MacDougall was staring at the sketch. “M-my mouth is open, but… my eyes aren't bugging out."

Clerve stared at Mr. MacDougall, flipped the notebook around to look at it, and then flipped it back to face Mr. MacDougall. "No, of course not. It’s not a violent moment. You'll die in your sleep. If you want to be found after, maybe put the box somewhere semi-prominent or mail a note that will only arrive after you die. Either way, you’ll re-enter the womb, like the whiny little baby you are."

Mr. MacDougall reached out with shaky hands and touched the notebook. "Re-entering the womb?"

"You obviously have some hang-ups about maternity," Clerve said. "Clear unresolved problems with your mother, resulting from her highly-probable post-partum depression. I'm just lucky you haven't seen me getting in touch with my feminine side or I'd never be struck of you."

"I--"

"I mean, who likes to reenact the _ending_ of _Psycho_ as a sex game?" Clerve asked. "Really. Your dear wife is very good to you. You might at least swing for the shower scene. If you had a little more ambition, you'd make a decent Ed Gein, but I know now not to let my hopes run away with me--"

"I want--"

“--however much I once wanted to research deviant psychology. I could’ve been doing something interesting and useful, Mr. MacDougall, but here I am with you.”

“Dr. Clerve--”

"What, good sweet Christ, man, _what_ do you want?"

"I want to do this," Mr. MacDougall said.

Clerve thought he heard a small shriek trying to rise from back somewhere behind his lamboid suture, but his mouth had the wheel and his frontal lobe stomped on the gas.

He peered at Mr. MacDougall. “I don’t believe I have the pleasure of understanding you. You want to commit suicide by locking yourself in a crate?”

Mr. MacDougall’s tongue slipped out to slick his lips. “Yes. You made it for me in particular, right?”

“Ye-es,” Clerve said. “You could think of it as a product of my experience as your therapist.”

Mr. MacDougall smiled. Not the watery, wimpy thing Clerve was accustomed to, or even the sly straight line of callow satisfaction whenever Clerve deigned to praise him, but a genuine, content little quirk of the mouth.

“A custom design,” Mr. MacDougall mumbled. “Just for me.”

“Hoo boy,” Clerve breathed. He hadn’t intended to say that out loud, but he hadn’t intended to say much of anything out loud. His mouth and his front lobe were high-fiving and driving his whole edifice over the lip of a canyon, and over the rush of blood in his ears he can’t hear the growing scream of his hind-brain trying to claw its way up to the brakes.

“Should I just get a Rubbermaid tub?” Mr. MacDougall asked.

“No. How would you seal it? If you have a big, hard-sided suitcase, that should do it,” Clerve said. “Or a trunk with a heavy lid. Maybe not a linen trunk, though. Something you’d ship.”

“I have a gorilla shipping box in the basement.”

“That would do. Maybe make a handle out of tape to affix to the inside lid.”

“And the acetaminophen?”

“Just take a bottle of Tylenol. Maybe with booze. Then three sleeping pills. You could also tape over your mouth, if you don’t want it to hang open. That might seal the deal, too, and you won’t be found in a puddle of vomit.”

Mr. MacDougall pursed his lips and nodded his head. “I don’t want to be found in a puddle of vomit.”

“Well, who does,” Clerve said.

“M-Maybe I’ll wrap myself in a blanket? I can go in cozy and warm.”

“Perfect. You should undress, too, for further symbolism.”

“Oh, yes. And Cindy will be happy. We have a good life insurance policy.”

“This really isn’t about Cindy, though,” Clerve observed. “This is yours.”

Mr. MacDougall’s eyes flashed with raw delight.

“It _is_ mine,” he said.

“Hoo boy,” Clerve said again, meaning it.

“Can I take this picture?” Mr. MacDougall asked.

“Uh, no.” Clerve took the notebook back. “I have notes from another patient on the other side. But I’ll make you a Xerox copy.”

Mr. MacDougall pouted a bit but nodded his head. “All right.”

Clerve busied himself with the all-in-one scanner-copier-printer and shifted his weight from foot to foot. “Well, I think our time’s just about up.”

“Yes. Thank you, doctor.”

Clerve passed him the copy. Something about this scene wasn’t entirely right. He didn’t know what it was. His ears were ringing with a thin screech. Maybe he was coming down with something.

The tacos al pastor having revenge, perhaps.

“Great,” Clerve said. “All right. Ciao? Let me know how it goes.”

Mr. MacDougall got to his feet and even flashed Clerve the sight of his shiny, white little teeth. “Goodbye, doctor.”

Clerve stood standing beside his armchair and watched Mr. MacDougall go. He watched the door for almost five minutes after that, trying to figure out why his head pulsed, why his knees felt weak, why he felt like he’d done something very, very stupid.

When it all finally registered, he ran out into the street in a full-throated holler, but Mr. MacDougall was long gone.

* * *

“Yes, I’m sorry, Mrs. MacDougall, I know it's quite late,” Empedocles Clerve chirped around his cigarette. “I do so very much apologize, but I’m afraid this is really very urgent.”

It was six hours later. Clerve had attempted to focus on his two other appointments with patients, but of course his head was nowhere suitable. Miss Patridge was of an anxious disposition and the way her esteemed psychologist twitched and guttered all through the appointment had left her holding back tears, by the end.

Now, he was on his fifth phone call to Manor MacDougall, the prior four having been ignominious failures. Cindy MacDougall struck him as the sort of woman who’d been hit hard by the invention of the wireless phone. Her voice belonged to someone with their fingers tangled in a spiral cord.

“I understand, Dr. Clerve, but I really can’t just rush in and -- oh -- John, at last. Dr. Clerve is calling for you, dear. Here he is, Dr. Clerve.”

“Thank you,” Clerve panted into the receiver. “Mr. MacDougall.”

“Hello, doctor. I just got out of the bath. How are you?”

“Mr. MacDougall, please understand that I wasn’t giving genuine psychological advice earlier in my office today,” Clerve babbled. “I lost my temper in an inexcusable lapse of professionalism. Obviously I deserve to lose you as a patient and to be severely sanctioned for my actions. Please disregard everything I said.”

“Water under the bridge, Dr. Clerve,” Mr. MacDougall said. There was a smile in his voice. Clerve began chewing on his cigarette filter. “Please, don’t think any more about it! You merely helped me figure out something I’ve wanted to do for a long time.”

“ _Christ_ ,” Clerve squealed. “Mr. MacDougall, suicide is not the answer. I will be forced to call the police.”

“Don’t worry, doctor! I’m not doing myself any harm. I just needed the change of perspective. I needed a little instruction, is all, and I’m glad that you were the one to provide it.”

Clerve’s voice rose to a shriek. “Don’t fucking kill yourself, you stupid little fathead!”

Mr. MacDougall was quiet for a moment. If Clerve hadn’t spent 209 hours dealing with the little toad, he’d really think that Mr. MacDougall had taken offense.

“I want to do this, doctor,” Mr. MacDougall said softly. “I’ve wanted to for years. I don’t enjoy my life. I’m miserable and I know I make everyone around me miserable. I don’t want the changes that I would have to make to enjoy my life again. I just want to be done.”

Clerve started horking up clichés. “There’s inherent value in human life! There’s so much to -- ”

“Please don’t kid me, Dr. Clerve, not after you were so honest with me. There’s not much to live for. I want to go back to the womb. I want to go back before it all started and go to sleep. You understand that, you really do. You drew the picture. Oh, but don’t worry! I’ll destroy that.”

“I have to call the police,” Clerve whimpered.

“You don’t,” Mr. MacDougall said.

“Don’t kill yourself.”

“I won’t hurt myself, Dr. Clerve. I’m afraid I have to go -- Cindy wants me.”

Mr. MacDougall hung up.

Clerve dropped his cigarette into a glass of water. He sat there, scraping tobacco flakes off of his tongue with his fingertips and wiping them on his handkerchief.

Little Mr. MacDougall. Clerve couldn’t just let him die. There was inherent value in human life and in any event Mr. MacDougall couldn’t die under Clerve’s recommendation. It would be humiliating! He couldn’t just tell someone to kill themselves! He wasn’t a sixteen year old on the Internet.

Clerve wanted to chew. Oral fixations, the last defense of a desperate man. He slipped his belt out of his trouser loops and stuck it in his mouth, gnawing like a dog trying to kick a smoking habit.

He had to call the police. Had to. Must must must do it now immediately right away.

Clerve had dealt with the man for 209 hours. Nearly 210, now, tonight. Hours and hours of absolute wholesale shit, all the pent-up misery of a life lived by one inescapably bound to a self that was not worth the having, and which dragged down everyone, Cindy, friends, Clerve himself, into a wailing maelstrom of sheer stunning mediocrity. And now Mr. MacDougall was going to commit suicide in a way so titanically pathetic: a stupid cowardly retreat into gutless death, naked in a fucking box…

Not that the death wasn’t beautiful, in some ways. Nude and wrapped up in a blanket, breath going more and more shallow until it was stilled. He would make himself soft and small again, rolled up into the smallest point possible and compressing still more, becoming a singularity and then slipping away into the darkness. Dying to the sound of his own heartbeat, as a heartbeat must have first awakened him in the water of the womb. Reducing and retreating into a pulse, slower and slower and then still.

How could a man like Mr. MacDougall, who had never truly been master of so much as a ring of keys, not want to enjoy the illusion of full possession and control of himself in a way so uniquely suited to him? To die completely as himself; to be understood deeply and thoroughly; to have the conclusion of his life so clearly planned and executed -- but never mind that it was of course Clerve who’d had to make the little nit’s mind up for him. Never mind that the little fucker was going to leave him holding the bag! Mr. MacDougall didn’t have to do any more work than taking a pill and closing a box, and he couldn’t even think up that scheme for himself!

Clerve gnawed for another few moments before pulling his belt out of his mouth and swallowing leather-flavored saliva. He had to call the police. Had to. Must must must must.

He picked up the phone. He put the phone back down. He fished the cigarette butt out of the glass of water, put the butt in the wastebasket, poured the water on a houseplant, and set up an opera recording on the record player.

210 hours made for a pretty long relationship, and Clerve did not want it to be longer. He’d give Mr. MacDougall an hour’s head start.

* * *

Mr. MacDougall did it, of course.

Clerve phoned the police with the news that he was concerned about a patient and wanted to have them check it out, but by the time they finally got around to it Mr. MacDougall had been dead for several hours. They found him in a gorilla shipping box in the basement, naked as a jaybird, mouth taped up, vomit indeed in his respiratory tract. They thought he was unconscious before he started vomiting.

It was unquestionably an elaborate suicide. There was a pleasantly short note, addressed to Cindy, with certain heavy confessions and unburdenings of the soul better discreetly glossed over than repeated here.

When it was over and Mr. MacDougall was in the ground, it seemed that no one was the wiser about the psychologist’s hand in it. The Xerox copy could not be found and Clerve did not mention it to anyone.

Empedocles Clerve knew he ought to confess, and had even felt deep, gnawing guilt for a couple of minutes. It passed unflatteringly quickly, but Clerve thought about it and determined that he was not about to get him all hung up on Mr. MacDougall. At the end of the day Clerve felt he had done right by him: Mr. MacDougall had wanted to die, and Clerve had wanted him to die, and die in specifically that way.

He hoped the man was happy, sort of. He was really looking forward to using those two hours every week to enjoy a little peace and quiet.

Nearly a month after Mr. MacDougall’s suicide, a new patient came to Dr. Clerve’s door. She was a titan of a women, elderly and hard-featured, capable of looking down her nose at someone from a seated position. Her pale hair was piled all on top of her head and the ironed crease in her trousers looked sharp enough to break skin.

“Howdy-do,” Clerve said, waving her to a seat. “Mrs. Stonkerton? It’s a pleasure.”

“I’m sure it is,” Mrs. Stonkerton intoned. She reached into her pocket book and produced an envelope. “I am here upon the recommendation of my son-in-law. He said you could arrange something for me.”

Clerve kept his gawping to himself. He opened the envelope and pulled out the Xerox copy of his drawing.

Oh, shit.

His blood went cold. He collapsed into his armchair. Mrs. Stonkerton looked at him with an expression of mild distaste on her face. Clerve pulled his tongue back from where he’d nearly swallowed it and commenced to babbling.

“I tried to stop him, I told him that this wasn’t a solution, I insisted that I would call the police, and I did, and I hurried them, and I tried to --”

“Be quiet, Dr. Clerve,” Mrs. Stonkerton said. “I am not here about all that. John never had so much spine as he did to put himself out of his humiliating misery. In fact, that’s why I want you. You will note his message on the back?”

Jaw hanging loose from the rest of his head, Clerve flipped the piece of printer paper over.

_Absolutely the best! Drafted mine out of consultation -- you must go! He will know what you want and help you work out the details. Completely bespoke experience! Could not be happier with it, and he can help you, too._

_Regards, John_

“I wish to die, Mr. Clerve,” Mrs. Stonkerton said, drawing attention once more to herself. “And now that any ragamuffin with the wit to close a door can die painlessly and discreetly, the only thing that’s left to bring any dignity and class to the matter is to force a bit of artistry to the job. I want you to design my suicide.”

“This is not ethical,” Clerve creaked. He immediately frowned at himself. That was stupid.

“That is stupid,” Mrs. Stonkerton observed with great sagacity. “I care exceedingly little for your ethics, Dr. Clerve--”

“When you say exceedingly little, wouldn’t that seem to mean in excess of a little?”

Empedocles Clerve briefly explored the option that he’d lost his mind.

Mrs. Stonkerton drew herself in high dudgeon. “You will watch your tone! I am a woman of considerable influence and perspicacity, Dr. Clerve, and I am not to be fucked around in this manner! You will design a suicide for me, like nothing the world has ever known!”

“Why on earth do you want to die?” Clerve asked of this noble lady.

Mrs. Stonkerton sniffed a bit and wiggled her head. “I am very bored, Dr. Clerve. Everything is extremely inconvenient and unpleasant. I will not be made to participate in any of it, any longer.”

Clerve scootched himself up into his seat so he sat more than sprawled. He looked at the Xerox.

‘Absolutely the best. Could not be happier.’

Damn his eyes. Maybe he cared about customer satisfaction after all. Although he’d never be able to look Cindy MacDougall (nee Stonkerton) in the eye.

Clerve cleared his throat and looked at Mrs. Stonkerton. “I really can’t in good conscience--”

“Oh, don’t be grubby, you hack,” Mrs. Stonkerton said. “I will pay you handsomely for it. Would $5,000 suit you, or do you intend to Jew me up?”

Empedocles Clerve looked very hard at Mrs. Stonkerton for several seconds together.

“No need to go over the top, Mrs. Stonkerton,” Clerve said. He crossed one leg over the other. “You don’t need to perform for me.”

Mrs. Stonkerton colored slightly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Clerve found himself smiling. She was old, and wealthy, and conscious of it, and excruciatingly rude -- and trying to seem ruder than she might actually be, for some reason. But she was alive, and human, and human lives were innately valuable.

Clerve thought about it, calculating the moral price to be paid. Mrs. Stonkerton’s life was probably valued for about $6,000.

He could give her an itemized list at the end of the conversation.

He reached out and picked up his notebook. He put it on his knee and twisted his pen open.

“If you want something dramatic, you don’t have to be insulting to get it,” Clerve said. “I’m already at your service. You don’t have to embellish your personality for me. We can certainly do gore.”

“Well,” Mrs. Stonkerton said, surprised. “Good. I do have...some interest in that.”

“Let’s dive right in. Please, do tell me about yourself, and don’t spare the details.”

“Perhaps you would be so decent as to offer me a cup of coffee, first,” Mrs. Stonkerton suggested, eyebrows aloft as the corners of her mouth trying to reach her decolletage. “Two sugars and plenty of cream.”

Clerve smiled brightly. He could work with this. “Certainly. Decaf or regular?”


	2. Clerve Does a Bunk

Empedocles Clerve's attention was completely consumed with seeing Miss Partridge out of his office, so he opened the door without the least expectation of meeting a man’s fist nearly at the level of his eyes. He had no patients on the book until much later in the afternoon, but he didn't dare let a frown touch his lips: even under these circumstances, Miss Partridge would see the expression as disapproval of her, and that was not to be borne, not when she was only now regaining her willingness to express herself polysyllabically. As he leaned back at a perilous angle, he continued to listen to her with the bright but carefully interested expression he’d worn all through Miss Partridge’s description her weekend plans.

The fist in play belonged to a well-dressed, heavyset man with his hat in his hands. The hand had been curled to knock, not to strike, and the man dropped it rapidly, a sheepish but brilliantly white smile appearing on his handsome face. "I beg your pardon! Are you Dr. Clerve?"

Miss Partridge's account of the bets she intended to place at the dog track dried up at the sight of a stranger. Clerve spared the man a very quick glance.

“I am he. Please come in. I'll be right with you."

The man nodded his head once and traded places with Clerve, who then gestured for Miss Partridge to come with him. The young woman had frozen in social terror and took to her heels with a spasmodic jerk, flying over the threshold to stand within Clerve's protective aura.

Clerve rekindled the warmth in his smile and turned the heat-lamp radiance of his attention back on Miss Partridge. "Let me see you to the street."

The courtesy was a necessity. The last time she'd attempted the journey unescorted, Miss Partridge had ended up dithering in the stairwell for nearly three hours until Clerve finally packed up shop and offered her a totally bemused arm on his own way out.

Miss Partridge nodded her head, hovering close to Clerve as he saw her to the steps. He didn't quite put his hand over her back, but he kept it nearby.

"You were saying?" Clerve asked.

"Hapsburg Footstool's thought likely to take the spread," Miss Partridge mumbled.

Clerve followed her down the steps and out onto the curb. In that time she mostly recovered from the startlement of the stranger and promised to put in Clerve’s $20 bet on Proletariat to win the split. She favored Clerve with a wan smile as she tucked herself into the Uber. Clerve smiled as she went; when the car was around the corner, he heaved a deep sigh and rolled his shoulders.

Nice girl. Nutty as a fruitcake.

Clerve vigorously shook all his limbs, working out the stiffness of hours in his armchair. He wiggled around, breathed the air, and wandered back up the steps into his office building.

Upstairs, Clerve's visitor was standing by the window that overlooked the street. He turned to Clerve with the stifled smile of a man who had just witnessed a semi-eminent psychologist performing the stanky leg and flapping his arms in a public thoroughfare. Clerve felt suddenly annoyed.

"Sorry to interrupt, doctor," the visitor said. "I'm afraid I should've called."

"Well, you might've," Clerve said, smiling through the sting. "But you're here now. I’m afraid you have the advantage, sir."

"Ah, yes," said the visitor. He dropped the hat on the sofa and patted his pants and jacket pockets, finding a leather billfold in his interior jacket pocket. He produced a black-bordered calling card and Clerve took it gingerly, unable to ignore the way it still glowed with residual body heat.

"Raoul Bismarck," Clerve read quietly.

“No relation,” the visitor said. Clerve favored Mr. Bismarck with a quiet huff of amusement.

"The pleasure is mine, Mr. Bismarck. When would be a good time for us to meet for an initial consultation?"

"Any time that is convenient for you, Dr. Clerve. I'm afraid I have to make a rather… eccentric request of you."

Clerve glanced up during the ellipses and saw Mr. Bismarck giving him an unmistakable look. Wheels began turning in Clerve's mind, well-oiled from recent use: disastrous investments? blackmail? impending deposition? terminal illness? It was hard to say. The man didn't look particularly distressed, but then again, the rich ones never did.

"Ah," Clerve said. He consulted his watch. "I have a few minutes, if you'd like to chat about the nature of your predicament."

"You're sure I'm not intruding?"

Clerve opened a hand towards his office door, smiling thinly. "Not at all. I can spare a little time. At least enough to get the picture."

"Thank you." Mr. Bismarck went through to office and stood for a moment admiring the room.

Clerve followed after and closed the door behind them, throwing the bolt home. Like the rest of the room, he’d had the door soundproofed ages ago, but all the same this was a matter of enormous delicacy and he didn’t want even a chance of interruption.

Most people liked to make a beeline for one of the leather armchairs set a few feet from Clerve’s desk, but Mr. Bismarck seemed content to wander the office and examine Clerve’s knickknacks. They weren’t particularly interesting -- no one trusted a psychologist with truly interesting objets d’art -- but he prided himself on keeping them at least subversive. A framed Rorschach blot here, an undeniably phallic little sculpture there, a slender volume tucked away between the medical texts and coffee table books called “The Joy of Hanging.”

Mr. Bismarck was eyeballing one of Clerve’s own works, his recreation of The Crucified Female Martyr. Clerve moved over to his own heavy desk, watching the way Mr. Bismarck tilted his head.

“This looks familiar somehow,” Mr. Bismarck mused.

“St. Wilgefortis,” Clerve said. “She’ll get you out of a pinch.”

“The brushwork is beautiful.” Mr. Bismarck looked over his shoulder with a grin. “This is never Bosch?”

“No, of course not,” Clerve replied. “What sort psychologist would I be, if I left Bosch paintings lying about the place? Someone would have a fit.”

Mr. Bismarck’s lips spread in a broad smile. One eyebrow shifted but he didn’t say a word, choosing to resume his appreciation of the piece.

"So," Clerve said, leaning back against his desk, "what's on your mind?"

"I need a suicide," Mr. Bismarck murmured. At last, he turned around to look at Clerve full-on. "Something in the luxury-economy range, if you understand me. I can't afford a completely custom job but I'd like something a little more thoughtful than a razor blade in a bathtub."

"Naturally. I have a range of options for every budget, and I offer a little complimentary tailoring and design with each.” What would be right, for such a man? Never hanging, he should think, knowing how undignified that was, but perhaps electrocution? Drowning? Asphyxiation? “May I ask the reason you're in the market?"

"Terminal illness."

"My condolences," Clerve crooned. He wondered what the disease was -- it certainly wasn't something that wasted and malingered, or at least the ravages of it hadn't yet begun. "Any particular aversions? Pain? Suffering? Plastic bags?"

Mr. Bismarck seemed surprised by his own smile. "Oh, dear. No plastic bags or sharp objects, please. Painless is the preference. Just the littlest bit of fuss sounds nice, but it should be rather minimal, although I’m sure I defer to your expertise."

Ah, a bone-deep sense of aesthetics. That did make things much pleasanter! "Not much for splashy drama, Mr. Bismarck?"

"Oh, I'm afraid not. She believes in old-world elegance, you see. So many women of a certain age do. Appearances are everything, but just a little flair really delights them."

Clerve's spine stiffened. "I beg your pardon?"

"My aunt. She's an elderly inmate at an assisted living facility and has entrusted me to secure your services for-- oh dear.” Clerve’s expression finally caught Mr. Bismarck’s eye. “You didn't think I was asking for myself, did you?"

"I'm so sorry, but our meeting must end there," Clerve said, picking up his guest’s calling card. He extended it from the tips of his fingers and put a pained-looking smile on his mouth. "As a rule I do not participate in murders, and I have no interest in helping people bump off their elderly relations. I don't know any hit men I feel I could refer, so I'm afraid I can be of absolutely no use to you, Mr. Bismarck."

Mr. Bismarck blinked a little. "I'm not trying to kill my aunt, Dr. Clerve. She wants to commit suicide."

"Mm, I'm sure. Désolé and regrets and that. But you understand that I can't possibly advise when you might as well go and get a little rat poison from the-- "

"I assure you I'm not trying to get you mixed up in an inheritance scheme," Mr. Bismarck said. "I wanted to come and ask if you would consider making a house call. Her condition prohibits her from visiting you herself, so she sent me along to commission you."

Clerve side-eyed Mr. Bismarck a little. "She's cogent?"

"Relatively sound mind," Mr. Bismarck said, see-sawing a hand. "Suicidal ambition being what it is. She’s clear enough to be severely dissatisfied with her position."

Clerve drummed his fingers on his desk. "I see. I… suppose I'm willing to meet her, but we must be left completely alone for the session."

"I understand," Mr. Bismarck said. He looked a little embarrassed. "I'm sorry, I suppose I should've led with that."

Clerve watched him squirm for a moment or two, but soon yielded. "So eager to meet me that you made no call and buried the lede? I'll consider myself complimented."

Clerve performed a shallow backbend over his desk and snapped his planner up from the leather blotter. "Let's see. Next Wednesday at two? Thursday at eleven? AM, I mean. That's all I have until the week after."

"Wednesday at two should work for her," Mr. Bismarck murmured. He pulled out his phone and scrolled a little. "I'll double-check but let's say 'Yes' for now. She's an inmate of Creeling Gables."

Hyacinth had told him about Creeling Gables, once. He frowned to himself, writing it down on the Wednesday slot of his planner.

"Something wrong?" Mr. Bismarck asked.

"Not at all. What do you think of your aunt's home? Is it nice?"

Mr. Bismarck wiggled his head. "I defy any such place to be really nice, but it's certainly not awful."

Clerve nodded. "I look forward to getting the feel for it myself."

Mr. Bismarck smiled. "Excellent. Thank you, Dr. Clerve. Let me not take up any more of your time."

Clerve waved a hand in the air. "I am too happy to be of service, sir. Before you go, may I ask where you learned my name?"

"I arranged Mr. Von Trencher's funeral. We became rather close, since we saw one another so much. He was very interested in seeing to the minutest details of the interment.”

That was a polite way of putting it. Clerve had considered the man a choleric old goat, a Stiffzilla determined to nitpick over the exact shade of periwinkle blue his lips would turn. Clerve had scalped him for the privilege of the fourth- and fifth-round edits. Hourly billing concealed a multitude of sins.

He turned a sympathetic smile on Mr. Bismarck. "You're a lawyer?"

"A funeral director, actually. Mr. Von Trencher…” Mr. Bismarck paused to choose just the right term, the silence not long enough to be rude, not brief enough to leave no implications in the mind of the listener. “...preferred to give his instructions personally."

Clerve doodled a little on his planner until he felt he could look up without smiling at this masterpiece of professional discretion. "Right. Well, best regards to the Von Trenchers all. I hope the late sire was not so indiscreet as to mention me frequently?"

"Only the once. But he was full of your praises."

Clerve thought again of the potential merit in starting a Yelp page. "That's very gratifying to hear. Shall I see you Wednesday?"

"Yes, I'll make the introduction." Mr. Bismarck grinned and offered his hand. "It was lovely to finally meet you, Dr. Clerve. Glad to put a face to the name."

* * *

Creeling Gables wasn't really that bad. Clerve had seen far worse places in his time.

It was just that it was so barren. The four-storey building was from that unfortunate architectural period that had been so obsessed with keeping up with the Ivanovs, resulting in an industrial-chic without the chic. The carefully-maintained green lawn left the viewer feeling strangely parched, and the thick hedges separating the sides of the building from the view of the street reminded one irresistibly of a sanitarium. There was more character in the parking lot’s aging white lines.

Inside, they’d done their best to paint the rooms rich and even invigorating colors, but on the first floor the air still smelled like antique body odor and the faint tang of eco-friendly cleaning materials, and no matter where one went they were pursued by a Fury that brayed in the voice of a heart monitor.

"Damned… beep. Rather face... Chinese... water torture," wheezed Miss Bismarck, hooked up to several drips and pumps.

Clerve had never yet liked any of the clients he’d advised in this capacity, but Miss Yvonne Bismarck was very nice. Perhaps that was appropriate -- she’d certainly need assistance, and he did find that he wanted to assist her with just about anything she wanted -- but he hadn’t gotten into this business to euthanize. It was going to take some getting used to.

"Do you like open water?" Clerve asked, sketching loosely. He was sitting in a very uncomfortable plastic chair, his notebook pressing into his knee and his head crooked nearly to her breast.

"Oh… yes. I used to... swim... like a fish... in the sum… mertime. And of course… Jean had a boat."

Clerve nodded. "Freshwater or salt?"

"Always salt... if I could get it... We're all beach… people, the… whole family. Used... to crab in… the bay. And you know... Raoul... used to surf."

"I did not know that," Clerve said diplomatically. "You would find it very difficult to make yourself drown, then?”

“Yes.”

“It’s not very pleasant, anyway. If you’re not driven to it by some kind of symbology, you spend all your time waiting for the endorphins to kick in. Might as well fill yourself with morphine until you pop, at that rate.”

“Remember… the bit… in To Kill a… Mockingbird?”

Clerve tapped the side of his nose. “I believe I understand you. You value lucidity.”

Miss Bismarck twitched out a titanic, tiny little smile. “Clear as… air.”

“Anything to avoid?”

"I don't like... guns," Miss Bismarck said. "But I'd relish... a good.. loud noise.. just about now. Anything... but the infernal... beep. Don’t much like… a scene. No fuss… something… elegant.”

“But loud noises? Explosions? Collisions?"

"Something... that doesn't... linger," Miss Bismarck replied. "I don't want to hurt… and I don't want to be... scared... for long. And... I don't want... to survive! No chance... of survival, Dr. Clerve. I... don't want… to be stuck in... this body... for one minute more."

Clerve was already sketching a building. Anything with cars was going to be too imprecise, and of course he couldn't possibly risk endangering any innocent bystanders. How much of a fall trajectory could he rope off? He needed to crack open his old college physics textbook.

“Have you ever dreamed of flying?” he asked. “Or been interested in traveling in the Orient?”

“They don’t… like you to... call it that… anymore.”

“Yes, yes, quite right. Apologies.”

“I always liked… air travel.”

Clerve nodded, spinning his pen around. “Fear of heights? Vertigo? Disdain of skyscrapers? I’m of the opinion that they’re fairly hideous, artistically speaking, but I relish the opportunity to have my tastes educated.”

Miss Bismarck twitched a smile out at him. “You want… to throw me off… a ledge?”

Clerve sat straight up and gave her a horrified look. “Excuse me, Miss Bismarck! I am not in the business of bumping little old ladies off of buildings! I would not presume so far. I’m only offering it as a suggestion.”

“I don’t want… too much fuss.”

“Well, it’s not going to be a fuss likely to inconvenience you at all,” Clerve argued. “But I take your point. Never fear. It’s only one of a series of options. I’ll look into something similarly refreshing that isn’t quite so likely to negatively impact public transportation.”

“Hmmm,” Miss Bismarck said. She smiled again, that little twitch of her lips. “I will… consider it. Do you need… to know… anything else?”

Clerve checked his watch. They’d been at it for almost thirty minutes. “I’ll arrange a follow-up consultation, but I have a few ideas for the moment. Let me develop them, and you think a little more on the subject. When we get together again, we can thrash out something more solid.”

“All right… Let me know… when you have the rest… to present. I’ll… consult with… Raoul.”

“Good. It’s nice that you have a family member to rely on. An awful lot of people just go it alone. Whole reason I’m in business, in fact.”

Miss Bismarck veritably grinned.

Mr. Bismarck tapped gently on the room door, the signal that Miss Bismarck’s caregiver was spotted coming down the hall. They were to wrap it up.

Clerve closed his notebook and leaned against it to scratch a telephone number on the back of his calling card. “Use this number to reach me, if you think of anything else you’d like to tell me before our next meeting. Will this time work for this coming Monday?”

“Oh… yes. Perfectly.”

“Good. I’ll see you then, if not sooner. Really let your imagination loose, and don’t spare the details! Anything you want can be gotten for you, as long as you tell me what it is.”

Mr. Bismarck opened the door. “Everything all right, auntie?” The caregiver was lurking nearby.

Miss Bismarck rattled out a sigh. “Oh yes...Dr. Clerve is just… very obliging.”

Clerve gave her a toothy grin. “I live to serve. Phone me whenever, won’t you?”

“I will.”

“Ta ta, my dear.”

Miss Bismarck managed to flutter her eyelashes. “Ta ta.”

Clerve licked his lips at Miss Bismarck and listened to her soft huff of amusement before rejoining her nephew in the hallway.

Mr. Bismarck gave him a thoughtful look. “What do you think?”

Clerve began to amble down the hall. “I think we can come up with something that will suit her very well. I want to see her again, if that’s possible.”

“Not only possible -- I insist. I’m glad that I know your work, Dr. Clerve, but I can’t help but have my reservations. I am fond of my aunt.”

Clerve gave him a smile. “Nothing more perfectly natural, Mr. Bismarck. But plenty of people have done this sort of thing before, and more and more are taking a swing at it every day. Just think of it as euthanasia with panache.”

Mr. Bismarck offered a slightly sad little smile. “Hmm. I’ll see if it brings me any peace. And please, call me… Raoul?”

Mr. Bismarck was leading the way and had gone a few paces before he realized that Clerve was no longer in step with him. Mr. Bismarck glanced back.

Clerve had stiffened like a startled rabbit, staring down the hall. Mr. Bismarck tossed a glance up the path and caught sight of a tall, powerfully-built man in dark sunglasses. The man was signing into the front desk log and saying something to the attendant.

Mr. Bismarck turned back to look at Clerve at the very instant Clerve dove into the nearest rec room. Mr. Bismarck stared at the spot Clerve had recently inhabited, processing the way the psychologist had gone almost horizontal in his leap.

"Dr. Clerve?" he asked softly.

A hiss came from behind the door and a clawed hand emerged. Instead of wrapping in Mr. Bismarck's lapel and trying to drag him in, it flapped vigorously.

"Shh-shh-shhhhh! Go on. I'll meet you in the 7/11 down the street."

" … I am fairly sure you’ve entered that room through the only door. There’s no way to get out."

"Shh! Go draw their attention, for God's sake. I'll figure this out on my own."

Bemused, Mr. Bismarck did as he was told. When his footsteps retreated, Clerve heaved a sigh and dedicated himself to escape.

The rec room had a bank of windows overlooking the parking lot and the screen came away with a little jimmying. He was standing on the grass and getting his right leg out of the window when he heard an unmistakable "ahem” just behind him.

Clerve stood there with his leg in the window and turned left to subject the cougher to the brilliant smile on his face. "Bless my soul! Is that really little Lee Bouvier? How are you, it's been an age!"

"Cut the dick, shithead," said the splendidly-dressed redhead with the freshly-cleared throat. She was several years younger than Clerve himself and a distinguished pair of frown lines framed her pretty red mouth. She looked down her nose at him, her gaze penetrating the dark lenses of her oversize sunglasses to make the trip. "Where's Mom?"

"Goodness, did she live here?" Clerve asked. "I thought she was in your care. I can assure you that this is all coincidence, and if it if weren't, I hardly imagine I would've been permitted to see her."

"No fuck you're not permitted," the woman seethed. "I swear to God, if you ever put a finger on my mother again--"

"That was all hearsay," Clerve objected. He kicked his way out of the window and got his footing on the perfect grass. He kept his back to the hedge. "My relationship with your mother was completely platonic."

"You were caught with your hand up her skirt!"

"Yes," Clerve said with enormous patience, "but there were no feelings, Diane. I won't be becoming your stepfather any time soon."

Diane turned bright scarlet and let out a raw shriek of fury. "Heinz!"

The tall, powerfully-built man dressed in a black suit materialized beside Diane. His semi-handsome face looked severe behind his dark glasses.

"Hello, Heinz," Clerve said wearily. “It’s good to see you. You’re looking very well.”

Heinz bared his teeth in something roughly approximating a smile and cracked his knuckles.

“Is violence so necessary?” Clerve asked. “Have our two households had a total breakdown of diplomacy? We used to be chums, Diane.”

“Heinz, he’s nittering,” Diane growled. “See if you can get some sense out of him.”

Heinz advanced. Clerve retreated, trying not to walk into the hedge and get brambled.

“Now hold on a moment. You can’t trust anything anybody says under the application of torture. That’s one-oh-one, my girl. And Heinz, _Heinz_ , if you strike me I will never forgive you.”

“Where. Is. My. Mother.”

“I thought you had her,” Clerve said.

“Dr. Clerve?” Mr. Bismarck’s voice sounded from the far side of the hedge.

“I’m here on business,” Clerve hissed. “They will be suspicious if I don’t reappear tout de suite.”

“Where is she?” Diane hissed.

“Dr. Clerve, I can hear your voice.”

“Attendez-moi, darling,” Clerve shrilled over the hedge at Mr. Bismarck. “Be with you in two shakes! I haven’t the least notion where your blasted mother is. Do you think I would risk a beating if I knew?”

“You always encouraged her to run around and get herself into danger!” Diane snarled. “I know you’re hiding her somewhere! Tell me where she is or I’ll have your license pulled so fast your head’ll spin!”

“I’m going to go get security, shall I?” Mr. Bismarck said in a worried tone. Clerve turned his head a bit to reply.

“My dear sir, nothing could be less nece--” The sentence prematurely truncated by a large fist smacking into Clerve’s eye. It caught him at a funny angle and laid him flat on the ground, his head almost in the hedge.

A little dazed and in considerable pain, Clerve peered backward at a spot between two trunks of the hedge and then squinted up at Heinz and Diane.

“This is assault,” he said frostily. “I will say good day.”

He pulled himself under the hedge, getting to the other side by wriggling as much as his aching head would allow. A bit scratched and leaf-smacked, he emerged at a spot not too far from Mr. Bismarck’s shoes.

Mr. Bismarck stared at him as if he were an eccentric. Clerve had the horrible suspicion that he might look ridiculous and felt, once more, obscurely annoyed. He gazed sweetly up at Mr. Bismarck.

“Sorry,” Clerve said. “That’s right. I did mention the 7/11, didn’t I? Completely flew out of my head. I hope you weren’t waiting long?”

After a moment’s pause, Mr. Bismarck replied, “Not at all. Who gave you the black eye?”

“The what?”

Mr. Bismarck frowned. “That was assault. I’m going to go find security.”

Clerve waved a hand. “I walked into a door knob.”

Mr. Bismarck reached down and took the waving hand in one of his own. He gave Clerve a significant look, but Clerve managed to still be surprised when Mr. Bismarck hoisted him easily to his feet and peered at the eye.

“My,” Clerve sighed. His head bubbled a little.

“Pardon?”

“I say, I’ve got a four o’clock I really can’t miss.”

Mr. Bismarck’s expression was very dry. “I’m sure your patient will consider your having a black eye to be a serious vote of confidence in your problem-solving abilities.”

Clerve gave him a poisonous glare. “Don’t make me bill you.”

Mr. Bismarck’s eyes widened but he did not seem impressed.

Clerve twisted his mouth. Getting hit had never put him in a good mood, but he didn’t like the way it made him lose his manners. “Apologies, Mr. Bismarck. That was nasty of me.”

“There’s no need for threats, Dr. Clerve,” Mr. Bismarck said. His mouth quirked in a slight smile but it still looked concerned. He squinted at the hedge at little. “When can we hope to see you again?”

“It’ll take me a few days to have more options to present your aunt, but we thought Monday next. Perhaps you might be so good at to have that afternoon free?”

Mr. Bismarck pulled out his phone again. “Hmm. I believe I’ll be available. Let me confer with her and make sure.”

Clerve nodded, but it made him a little dizzy. He really hoped he wasn’t concussed. Being concussed was such a hassle, and would only complicate the process of buying a bag of frozen peas.

* * *

Hours later, Empedocles Clerve ankled up to the base of a tall tree in the park. He stood with his hands on his hips, peering up into the branches and squinting against the sunshine.

"Hyacinth?" he called.

Behind him came a leafy rustling and something zinged out of the canopy and bonked into the back of his head. Clerve yipped and spun around, cradling his head with one hand and glowering at the trees across the brick walkway.

"Never mind," he announced, beginning to walk away.

More rustling, and then a voice from the green. "Oh, come on. One little acorn."

"You could've lodged the pointy bit in my scalp! Use a ping pong ball, you savage. And to think I came out here propelled by protective instinct."

Hyacinth appeared slowly, conveyed out of the tree in a rope sling of her own manufacture. She rappelled down and frowned at him as she settled on the ground. "How'd you get that shiner?"

"Heinz."

The elderly woman turned pale. "Oh, fuck me."

Clerve tried to nod, but it made him a little dizzy. He held up a fist and knocked it up and down. "I went to Creeling today --"

"Why on earth would you ever --"

"And bumped into Diane." He sighed. "She's looking very well. Legs all the way down to the ground."

Hyacinth pointed a finger at him and squinted, but otherwise let it pass. "How'd it go?"

"Oh, you know the drill. 'Clerve, you expletiveweasel, tell me where you've put my mother,’ et cetera, et cetera. I was on business and my companion picked me up after Heinz fixed my wagon."

"I always thought Heinz rather liked you."

"I can tell," Clerve agreed. "I think he winked but it's hard to tell with those glasses. I told him I’d never forgive him but I don’t mean it. I just can’t stay mad at a man who coordinates his tie and pocket square with his employer’s shoes. Can we walk? I’m stiff and sore."

"Does she know where I am?" Hyacinth asked, pushing the last of the rope harness off of her hips and dragging the line out of the tree. She started wrapping it around her waist as they walked.

"I'm not a snitch!"

"Sure, but you wear shoes. Any distinguishing mud? Maybe they tailed you here?"

Clerve sneered. "No. I put the bust of Voltaire at my desk and army-crawled out. We'll have to look out for air-guns before I try and go back."

"Don't be sarcastic at me, you goat-troubler, I'm expressing a legitimate concern."

"And I'm saying I can spot and lose a tail, having advanced beyond the age of twenty-goddamn-six in a career that consists entirely of displaying great personal discretion. Unless Heinz also tranqed and tagged me for science when he hit me, they don't know where I am."

Hyacinth heaved a sigh. "You'd think the little battle-axe would be willing to let me be."

Clerve did not advance the proposition that Diane loved her mother and was concerned. He didn't need a second black eye. "I'm not interested in remote-psychologizing your daughter. It's a zero sum game. I'm just here to tell you to keep a lookout, because I am your friend, who for his services gets beaten and wanged with acorns."

Hyacinth blew up her bangs. "Wah, wah, wah. I'll buy you one of those things you like. The stupid drinks."

"There's nothing stupid about sharbat."

"Anything they sell out of a truck for $6 a pop is stupid."

"That's a geographical complaint. Scarcity issues. It's not the drink's fault it's left in this godless country, an outlier in a sea of unprepossessing soft drinks."

"Talking like a fool is an interesting way tyou should never get wanged with an acorn again," Hyacinth grumbled.

* * *

“She wanted me to say that she’s extremely fond of the jumping idea.”

“Really?” Clerve asked. “I have to admit I’m pleased. I was up much of Saturday night working out the schematics. There’s a building where the stoplights make for an ideal window of empty street, if we could get it just right. And the sidewalk’s nothing. You can get free traffic cones anywhere.”

“Can you?”

“Of course! They just leave them out on the street, after all.”

They were standing outside of a Starbucks, guzzling cold brew on Monday afternoon. Clerve had purchased his with some of the cool $60 he’d won from the bet Miss Patridge had laid for him, and now he extended a sandaled foot over the curb in a delicate, gazelle-like gesture. He lead the way across the street, just a pace ahead of Mr. Bismarck. He had another appointment coming up and couldn’t really linger.

“Ri-ight. I think you struck on just the thing. She’s seen that photo of the Empire State jumper years ago, and I believe it’s stuck with her. She asked me to get her pearls out of storage.”

Clerve lit up from the inside. “Pearls! To a suicide! Oh, I love her. She’s wonderful. I think I know where I can get a little surplus of cosmetics, if she’d like to get herself gorgeous for the Almighty.”

Mr. Bismarck coughed a bit. “Ah, thank you. She’ll appreciate the offer, I am sure. I’m sorry she couldn’t meet you today -- her lungs are so very delicate and a bad morning can set her back weeks -- but I trust you don’t think I’m still trying to rub her out?”

Clerve goggled at him before the right euphemism slotted itself into place in his brain. “Ah. No. No, she’s perfectly suicidal, there can be no doubt. And I credit her with making up her mind so completely that she’ll go ahead with it whether I help her or no.”

Mr. Bismarck gave him a rueful smile. “You’re quite right about that.”

“Well, charming! I have a spot on Wednesday that I can use to see her, just to get the thing hammered out, and then I suppose we can slot for Friday or adjacent to do the actual deed. Would Friday work for you?”

“I believe I can find time for my own aunt’s suicide, yes.”

“I only ask because this can be such a solitary pursuit,” Clerve said. “You know, mucking about by one’s self, all miserable and suchlike. I can keep an eye on her quite well, but since you two are close…”

“Yes, yes. I’ll be there.”

“Fantastic.” Clerve rolled his head on his neck, letting the bones grind against one another. “You don’t mind my asking why you’re willing to see your aunt off in such a spectacular manner, do you?”

“Are you asking in a professional capacity?”

“Sure.”

Mr. Bismarck pressed his lips together. “Selfish reasons, mostly. She was very vibrant once. It hurts very badly to see her like this. Sick in bed shouldn’t be my last memory of her.”

Clerve hummed understandingly. He didn’t think he’d have to let Mr. Bismarck dangle long. The man might be accustomed to the silence of the grave, but he was sociable at heart.

Sure enough. Mr. Bismarck presently added, “She also talked me out of a similar course of action years ago. We tend to confide and sympathize with each other. She doesn’t want to reach the point where she’s too helpless to take her own life.”

Clerve knew himself to be an excellent judge of character and was very gratified to hear that the old girl was everything he wanted to believe her to be. “That’s very touching, Mr. Bismarck. You are a most dutiful nephew.”

“Call me Raoul. Nearly everyone does.”

“Right-o. Probably best to stick with Clerve, in my case. I’ve known people to absolutely melt down after three syllables, let alone four.”

“But do you mind if I…?”

“No, I suppose not. Just keep the ‘k’ sharp, if you please.”

Raoul slurped at his coffee. “Your eye looks well.”

“Thanks,” Clerve said. “Green has always suited me. I think it makes me look rakish.”

“Hell of a doorknob,” Raoul muttered disapprovingly.

Clerve bobbled his head. “They don’t make them like they used to.”

* * *

Clerve had a nice smartphone he sometimes pretended to not entirely understand how to use and it usually chirped a happy little tropical electronic song when he was getting a call.

He also had a collection of severely utilitarian burn phones. He tended to keep them in his bedside drawer until he gave one of the numbers to his special clients. Then he kept them close at hand.

At 8 a.m. on Wednesday morning, one of the drawer-bound sang out like a clarion. Tuesday night had been extremely long: Clerve’s initial consultation with Mr. Grisvold had run almost an hour outside it’s proscribed borders and far and away out of proportion to the amount of interest Clerve could oblige himself to feel about the man. After that appointment, Clerve had found himself struggling to eject himself from his current timezone as he tried to find a reputable seller of taxine or, failing that, a whole English yew, because Miss Beckrington had to have things all her own specific and faintly dendrophiliac way and Clerve was being paid rather handsomely to make sure that she would get it.

Still abed, Clerve slapped a hand around on the end table and caught the drawer ring with half-numb fingers. He pulled the drawer open, found the vibrating offender, and hauled it up to squint at the screen. He didn’t recognize the number at all, so he flicked the phone open and clapped it to his cheek.

“Wussa,” he said.

“I’ve been rumbled,” Hyacinth said.

“Zu?”

“Diane nicked me. Fuckin’ Crackhead Jimmy tipped her off for the price of a bad chalupa. You never know what they’ll sell you for but I guess that was it. The gutless little worm.”

Clerve snorted. “Tol’j’eesacrap.”

“Yeah, but I can’t stay mad at him. He just looks at me with those big ol’ eyes and I break like an egg.”

Clerve was halfway in his pillow and disinclined to change the situ. “S’whashy’want?”

“Get your shit together, Clerve, I need-- “ Hyacinth’s voice rose octaves. “To see my grandson! Come on by when you get a minute or two and we’ll have a little bite to eat! I think you’ll like the dining room they have here. Lots of good fresh vegetables!”

“S’line secure?”

“Of course, dearie.”

“Oh my God. Stop.” Scared conscious, Clerve rolled over onto his back. “How’s the hoosgow? This a maximum-security joint?”

“Yes indeedy. Down by the river, oh, what do they call it again? Yes, yes, that’s right, Brumpingham Arms.”

“Don’t drink anything they give you,” Clerve said. “I heard they drug the water supply.”

“No kidding?”

“When we get you out, we’ve got to fake your death. And this time we’ll make it stick. There’s no way they’ll let me in. They probably have my fingerprints on file. A disguise will only get me so far. Let me make a few calls.”

“Thank you, sweetheart.”

“What floor are you on, Nana?”

“Third floor,” Hyacinth said. “Yes, a lovely view right out over the water. We’re right up to the shore, you know? Very nice little spot. I think you’ll like it!”

“Right,” Clerve said. “Gotcha. I got a little work to do and in the meanwhile I’ll look around. If not tonight, tomorrow for sure.”

“You’re selling me up the fucking river, you shitsnake,” Hyacinth said in a much more natural voice. In times of stress, the resemblance between mother and daughter became more pronounced. “Crackhead Jimmy all over again.”

“Let a man work, for the love of Christ. How am I going to keep you in the style to which you have become accustomed if I can’t earn my paychecks? Make the most of institutional life until I can get there. Watch some Jeopardy. Enjoy your three squares.”

“This is your fucking scene, Clerve, not mine. If anyone offers me a turn at shuffleboard I’m going to break their goddamn nose.”

“Shuffleboard is great. If you have to call me, let it ring three times, hang up, and then once, hang up, and then call again. I’ll know it’s you. If I call I’ll ring you the same way, so just set your piece on vibrate. How’d you even get this number?”

“I helped you buy it from the CVS. Why do you even need so many disposable phones?”

“I care about technological privacy. Can I reach you on the number you’re calling from?”

“For the meanwhile. But you’re going to have to use a falsetto and call yourself Petey. Let me see what I can find. One of these biddies has to have a secret phone. If I can trade some cigs for use, I’ll call you from it and let you know.”

“If you have to shiv anyone, carve my initials in them.”

“The C’s going to be hard.”

“Oh, it's not that bad. It's all in the elbow. Catch you in a few.”

* * *

“What’s your name?” the desk attendant at Creeling Gables asked.

“Clerve? Dr. Clerve. I’m here to see Miss Yvonne Bismarck.”

The desk attendant checked the list of permitted visitors and looked up at him with a glower.

“I’m sorry,” the desk attendant said. “Miss Bismarck isn’t receiving visitors.”

Empedocles Clerve gave the desk attendant a determined squint. “You astonish me.”

“I can tell her you wish to see her at her earliest convenience.”

Clerve pushed his lips out in an exaggerated purse and lowered them down on his face. He propped an elbow on the table in his most companion-like and working-class fashion.

“Diane Snodgrass had a thing or two to say about me, didn’t she?” Clerve asked.

“I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” the desk attendant said.

“I’m not going to stop you from anything you have to do. I consider myself asked. I consider myself even told! But unfortunately I’ve got to continue to work if I’m going to live in any kind of style in this city, so I’m also going to ignore what you said and go see my patient.”

The desk attendant hit a button on her phone. “Security, please come to the front desk and escort this visitor out of the lobby.”

“Ma’am,” Clerve insisted, “I do not fondle old ladies, or whatever other horrible lurid thing Diane has told you.”

“Security, please come to the front desk!”

“It was a shocking misunderstanding. I was actually reaching for her flask, you see. She was perfectly continent and kept it on a thigh strap because the hospital didn’t check there as often as they should’ve, and it was all part of a scheme to have her committed anyway, so I don’t feel my reputation should be forever besmirched for participating in the innocent quest for a little bootlegged gin.”

“Security!”

“And anyway I have the greatest respect for Miss Bismarck and I am not about to go in and start copping a feel without her enthusiastic-- ”

A pair of very large men appeared at the mouth of the hall.

Clerve smiled. “Hello, chaps.”

“Please get him out,” the desk attendant said.

“You’ll have to come with us, sir,” said one of the large men.

“Nothing would please me more, darling, but I’m trying to stand my ground here.”

The large men looked at one another and approached. Clerve kept his eye pinned to the desk attendant’s face as they grabbed him under the arms and began to drag him to the door.

“I want the record to show it!” Clerve cried. “I have locked my knees! My ground is stood! I am not an old-lady fondler!”

The concrete walkway outside the front door was unforgiving. The large men didn’t push him down, but they let him drop rather ungently.

Clerve gave them a stinging look from his spot supine on the ground.

“I’m not,” he insisted.

One of the large men gave him a slow, unimpressed blink. The other said in an unforgivably ironic tone, “We really don’t doubt it.”

“I’m naturally flirtatious, you know. I’m on a patch to control it.”

“Right.”

“Where in hell were you two a few days ago, when I was getting pummeled not three yards from here? I don’t think you’re cut out for this kind of work.”

“I guess we must’ve been several yards away.”

“You two aren’t just mindless slabs of meat,” Clerve said. “When you were young, did you think you’d ever get to the point of kicking innocent practitioners of the psychical arts out of a mid-range old folk’s home?”

“How much they paying you for this kind of brilliant psychological insight?” asked the ironic one.

“I’m trying to ground a human connection in you, you faceless representation of brutal bureaucracy! But if you insist on taking that tone, we might as well dispense with the human experience all together, to say nothing of common politeness!”

“Go home.”

“You go home, you post-ironic son of a bitch!”

“You can stop screaming. We’re not going to kick you,” said the unironic one. “You’ll only sue.”

“You can’t possibly know that for certain.”

“Go home.”

Clerve gave them an extraordinarily sour look. They slowly crossed their arms over their chests, not precisely in unison.

Clerve pulled out his phone and crossed his legs at the ankles, making himself comfortable. He listened through five rings before hearing Raoul’s voice purr, “You’ve reached Bismarck Biers on Halfchurch Street. Please leave your name, your number, and a brief message, and one of our associates will contact you immediately.”

“I’ve been evicted from your aunt’s place of residence,” Clerve told the answering machine, “with extreme prejudice. I am falsely accused. Don’t get up. I’ll come to you.”

Clerve terminated the call and rolled up to his feet just to prove what a creature of extraordinary grace he was. He gave the guards a pronounced sniff and pocketed his phone, turning to remove himself to the sunnier climes of Halfchurch Street and Bismarck Biers.

It was a pleasant twenty-minute walk, only a few parks away from Creeling Gables. Clerve indulged himself with a cigarette and thought whimsically about Hyacinth stabbing retirees. He’d been bounced and jounced around by this family enough to make him rue the alumni brunch at which he’d first met Hyacinth nearly twenty years before. If he’d known his rich new patient’s daughter would grow up to be the type of woman who wanted to shut away her mother and hire goons, he would’ve stuffed his pockets full of mini-muffins and made a break for it.

What did it all go to show, his scrupulous attentiveness to this one family among all those who struggled in this infinitude of dust, except that there was never any pleasing anyone? Diane could not live happily in a world where her mother was at large, and Hyacinth could not live under authoritarian rule. At least this particular clash of Titians had left him mostly whole -- the next one would probably see him pulped and juiced.

Bismarck Biers was lodged in an appealing Colonial-style red brick building set back from the street by a long concrete walk. The close-cut lawn and demure shrubs were amply shaded by the pair of magnolia trees set on either patch of yard, and Clerve narrowly avoided smacking into the stately flagpole set midway up the walk. He bounced nimbly up the three steps leading to the door and quietly admitted himself within.

The lobby inside was pristine, all white imitation-marble floors with black borders and diamonds and a stately curved staircase with red carpet leading up to the second floor. The delicate little concierge desk was unattended, so Clerve let out a low whistle of admiration and began to see himself around the place.

Tucked away in the room immediately to the left was a parlor full of irregular coffins. Clerve’s experience with such vessels consisted exclusively of the unremarkable aluminum sort, but everything in the showcase was made of wood. Plenty of the boxes had been hand-carved, and he rippled a fingertip over the beautiful bas-relief gouged into the top of a pretty little cherrywood number. He really might need to do a little shopping for himself, when his business was concluded with Miss Bismarck; her nephew certainly knew where the good shit was to be found. There were imitation cathedral buttresses, rustic pieces of rough-hewn, still-fragrant wood, even caskets made to look like sarcophagi. The sizes were varied, too; Clerve had never seen a double-wide before. It was majestic.

Drunk on these carpentry delights but seeing not a single soul around, Clerve left the room and and hoofed it down a promising hallway, following the susurrus of dolorous conversation.

A room with green paisley wallpaper was filled with people. Even from the door Clerve could see that the stiff had been laid out in splendor, crowded and crushed into the gorgeous coffin amid dense white blooms the size of a baby’s head, and mingling in the crowd Clerve noted at least four of nature’s greatest mourners: weepy women in sensible shoes. Whosits had been well-loved in life, and Clerve had little reason to wonder at it, since the deceased had clearly had the good taste and forethought to desire a small buffet table be tucked away to the side for the bereaved to peck at.

Clerve offered comforting expressions such of the assembled as he made eye-contact with and even murmured to a few of them, trying to get the right feel for the crowd before he signed the guest book. As he made his way around the room, he caught sight of Raoul standing primly out of the way in a well-made morning coat and waistcoat. Clerve gently detached himself from one of the guest of honor’s grieving partial acquaintances to dance his way over. Raoul saw him coming and didn’t look at all surprised.

“Are open-toed shoes appropriate for a funeral?” Clerve asked in an undertone. “I’m asking for a friend.”

Raoul’s expression remained serenely dolorous. “The suit could be a darker grey.”

“At least I didn’t wear the pink tie. Can we talk?”

“Surpassing briefly, yes. Follow me.”

Raoul led the way out of the room into a little hallway and thence behind a door. Raoul flicked the lightswitch and after a pregnant pause the fluorescents snapped on. Clerve looked around, surprised to find himself so immediately in a sterile operating room. He wandered further in, peering at the gurneys and jars of makeup. There was even a chainsaw.

“Good Christ. Do you really use the saw much?”

“Oh, yes. Much more than you’d think.”

Clerve felt he must be being had, but the chainsaw sat there looking innocently well-used and at home, and altogether the scene left him with no choice but to say, “Huh.”

“I haven’t had a minute to listen to my voicemail, but I see you called. What’s wrong?”

“I’ve been denied access to visit your aunt, or any other inmate of Creeling Gables. I believe it to be the work of the doorknob.”

Raoul's mouth squinched up. “I see. Well, of course I’ll get in touch with the staff immediately.”

“Thank you. You might have to go in and prove your identity -- I doubt they’ll be so obliging as to believe you if you just call them.”

“Did they give you a pretext?”

“No, of course not,” Clerve said. “The attendant was terribly discreet, so I’m sure it’s all political. You know me. I’m as harmless as a lamb.”

Raoul nodded solemnly. “Is there anything else, Dr. Clerve?”

Clerve drummed his fingers on the gurney a little, looking around. “I’ll get out of your hair. Just… well, you couldn’t possibly be prevailed upon to do me a solid, could you?”

“Hmmm,” Raoul murmured. “Sounds dubiously legal already.”

“Nothing dubious about it,” Clerve chirped. “I just want you to sell one of those beautiful coffins in your front room. As soon as you possibly can. Got any spare time tomorrow?”

* * *

Clerve spent a lot of the evening in the hardware store. He needed ropes in a general way, so as to offer his hanging victims and especially Mr. Grisvold more of a selection to choose from, but in the hours to come he knew he would also need something lightweight, long, and not particularly slippy. He picked up a little jute number, a nice water-repellant something, and a hemp option for the eco-conscious, each of which he’d determined for himself were pleasures to slip into.

Clerve had been humming to himself and stepping into his office when he caught a great big whiff of Robert Piguet’s Fracas.

Foo.

He didn’t acknowledge it, choosing instead to close the door and lock it behind him. He kicked on the light, hoping that would teach her a lesson.

She didn’t hiss, to her credit, but she still looked pained when he turned around and theatrically dropped the bag.

“Good God!” he cried. “You startled me.”

Diane sneered at him. “Evening, doctor. You look like shit.”

Clearly such a ridiculous statement was meant to be breezed over. Clerve breezed. “Well, well. I know what my locks are worth. How do you do, Diane? It’s so good to see you.”

Diane ignored him, eyeballing the spilled contents of his bag.

“My, my. So many ropes. Are the chains in storage?” Diane purred. “I never knew so much about your hobbies, Clerve.”

Clerve gave her his brightest smile. She was in a good mood, triumphing over her mother as she was. That would make this really unpleasant. “Shock aside, it is a delight to see you. Can I pour you a drink?”

“Fuck off. I’m here to tell you not to interfere with my mother ever again.”

“It’s sweet of you to tell me yourself.”

Diane pushed her fur up around her ears. “Don’t think I don’t know what that rope’s about.”

“I’m committing suicides.”

“You’re trying to bust Mom out. Well, good fucking luck with that. After the stink I raised, you’re banned from every nursing home from here to Tuscaloosa, so you can keep your grubby little mitts to yourself.”

“Really,” he sighed. “How is this supposed to make me feel? You’re never anything but unkind to me. I can hardly imagine what I’ve done to merit such treatment.”

Diane sneered again -- she really did that well, say what one would about the rest of her disposition -- and snatched up her handbag. “I’m watching you, scuzzball. You come near my fucking family again and I’ll ruin your shitty little life, comprende?”

“Has anyone every told you you’re beautiful when you’re angry?”

Diane snapped back the bolt on his office door and left, slamming it so hard the jamb creaked. Clerve sighed to himself and threw himself back on his sofa.

Darn. He was going to have to buy some new different kind of rope she couldn’t claim to have seen. Good thing he kept the receipt.

* * *

On Thursday afternoon, Clerve knocked off work at about 4 p.m. and rented a boat.

It had been too many years since he’d had to deal with his total lack of sealegs, but he managed to pilot the motorboat up and down the river at just enough of a distance to make himself a unremarkable presence.

There wasn’t much of a plan to this kind of thing. Everything was luck and footwork. The best thing they could do was to get Hyacinth out from under the eyes of her keepers and position her with access to her portal of egress. In this case, it was going to be a third-storey window.

Sent out on the pretext of selling Hyacinth a funeral plot, Raoul Bismarck had been admitted to Brumpingham Arms just after lunch. In his briefcase he had a bottle of water, a sandwich, and a coil of rope, the most immediately inexpensive yet climbable that Clerve’s hardware store could produce. Mr. Bismarck and Hyacinth met in a private chamber to discuss the delicate matter of carking it, and while sequestered the fugitive inhaled sandwich and drink and wrapped the rope around her waist until it lay mostly smooth.

By sundown the home’s more advanced security measures, including motion-sensing lights, would be in place. Most of the residents looked to fall asleep around 7 p.m., so Hyacinth waited until the sepulchral stillness of 7:30 to open her window, knot the rope around the radiator, and throw her 90-pound self over the window ledge.

Squinting through binoculars, Clerve spotted her window as it opened. He piloted the boat as close to the edge of the river walk as he dared.

Hyacinth liked to live in trees a whenever she could, so the descent was nothing she wasn’t already intimately familiar with. She cleared the storeys in a brisk 45 seconds and serpentined across the lawn to get to the edge of the riverwalk. She flung herself over and splashed into the water, churning through the water in an Olympic-grade doggie paddle. Seized with the sudden horror that she’d be somehow sucked into the motor’s blades and hacked to pieces, Clerve cut the engine.

Hyacinth bobbed near the boat. “Finally!”

Clerve chucked a flotation ring nearby and dragged the line in. Hyacinth let him to the work until she was level enough with the edge of the boat that she could tumble in.

“Get us out of here,” she gasped, laying as flat to the deck as she could while Clerve tried to reconcile himself to the roll of the vessel. As they spat a churn of white water behind them, an orderly stuck her head out of the third stores window of the Brumpingham Arms.

“Did they chip you?” Clerve bellowed over the roar of the rekindled motor.

“No.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I didn’t sleep. Or drink. I mashed up my meals and stuck them to the underside of the dining table.”

“Attagirl,” Clerve said appropriately. “There’s whiskey in that first aid kit.”

“Thank God.”

Clerve drummed his fingers on the steering handle. “You were there for four days. Not a drop to drink?”

“You don’t want to know what I drank.”

Clerve shuddered delicately and dug around one of his pockets. No, he’d be long dead if he had to try and walk a mile in Hyacinth’s shoes. There were people in the world who might rival her for bull-headedness and bloody-mindedness, but never for grit.

He pulled out the burn phone tied to the number Hyacinth had used and pitched it over the side of the boat.

“I could really go for a reuben,” Clerve bellowed. “What about you?”

“I want a steak,” Hyacinth replied. “Red meat and liquor.”

“I bet they have cheesesteaks!”

“That’d do.”

Clerve pulled up to the dock and Hyacinth leaped out, helping to tie the boat off. Clerve dropped the keys off in the thing by the rental office and they began to mosey into the city.

Clerve turned his head to look at her. “Christ, woman, what are you wearing?”

Hyacinth looked down at her sodden tweed threads. “Called a skirt. I'm not big on the concept myself.”

“I barely recognize you out of bike shorts. Do something about your hair, would you?”

“They took my portaledge,” Hyacinth said. She pulled her hair out of the bun and shook it out, before parting it down the center and beginning to braid her pigtails again. “I need a new one before I can set up house again.”

“Yeah, good luck with that. You can’t crash on my couch. I’m expecting Diane to come down my chimney and murder me in my bed as it is. Did I tell you she broke into my office? I'm still trying to air the smell out.”

“Bitch,” Hyacinth said almost affectionately. “Well, I’ve gotta crash somewhere. And before you say she’ll never think to look for me at something as obvious as a shelter, she’s got spies all over those things.”

“Didn’t someone want to sell you a coffin today? Tell Mr. Bismarck you want to try before you buy.”

Hyacinth smiled. “You know he makes some of them himself?”

Clerve goggled. “No.”

“Yeah. Chainsaw sculpture. Showed me some pictures. I mean, it’s a Tibetan sky funeral or bust for me, but I might get you one for Christmas. You can put a sheet of glass over it and use it as a coffee table.”

Clerve bought her a cheesesteak and a few nights at a cheap, nameless hotel. Let her grouse about being closed in. Until she could get to one of her cash stashes and shake the city until it spat out a portaledge, this was the best he could do. He wanted to stay on her personal “nice” list.

* * *

Miss Bismarck conserved her strength all week and told her nurse that she meant to go to church on Sunday.

On the appointed day, Miss Bismarck had her nurse get her up out of bed. She wanted to wear a pair of high-waisted trousers, a blouse with a Peter Pan collar, her pumps, a pair of gloves, a cloche, a sweater, and her pearl necklace. She wheezed rather badly as she tried to put on her lipstick, so she stuck the tube in her handbag and asked the nurse to wheel her out to where the handicap access bus was waiting.

She had her driver drop her off at an unpopulous street corner in a decent part of town, and waited until the bus rolled out of sight. Already tired, she wheeled herself only a few feet before a pair of hands caught her chair and began to push her into the lobby of an old-fashioned hotel.

“Oh, there… you are,” Miss Bismarck said, breathing even harder than Clerve had remembered.

“Hello, dearest. How are you feeling today?”

“Hateful.”

“Attagirl. Love the look. Very chic.”

“I didn’t… want my skirt… to fly up.”

“Wise. Wise. Your nephew’s already on the top floor. Shall we join him?”

“Oh, let’s.”

Clerve tucked them both into an elevator and pressed the top floor button.

They’d elected to perform the deed from the roof of the more unassuming buildings in town, based on the age-old theory that the internalized unremarkablility would prevent suspicions of their real purpose in being there. The place had fourteen respectable stories and that was plenty for them.

Raoul met them on the top floor and helped lift his aunt out of her chair for the climb up the staircase to the roof, while Clerve held doors. When they surmounted the height, Raoul sat his aunt gently down on one of the folding chairs they’d brought up from the basement.

“All right,” Clerve said. “May I have a word with your aunt, Mr. Bismarck?”

Miss Bismarck looked cold up there in the free air above the earthly mire, and her breathing wracked her body in an ugly manner, but her eyes were bright and clear. Clerve pulled up a seat and began to ask her some questions.

Miss Bismarck answered them to his satisfaction, and after a few pleasant minutes of discussing final details, he beckoned over her nephew.

“I’ll be right over here,” Clerve said. “Let me know when you’re ready.”

“Thank you… doctor.”

As Miss Bismarck and her nephew exchanged some wheezy words of leave-taking, Empedocles Clerve smoked a thoughtful cigarette and relished the wind working its way through his hair. The traffic cones had bedded the sidewalk down for the moment and he kept his eyes faithfully on the traffic lights.

He felt them behind him at last. He pinched out his cigarette and stuck it in his chest pocket.

“Ready to roll?”

“Yes.”

Clerve looked Miss Bismarck up and down and gave her a bright smile. “Oh, one more thing… lipstick?”

Miss Bismarck gave him one of her heavy smiles and offered him the tube. He drew the paint across her lips and smiled even more broadly at what he saw.

“All right. Here we go.”

She moved slowly, heaving for breath with a fierce, determined expression on her face. The edge of the building was partitioned off with a guard rail, and they got her over onto the other side and let her stand with her hands wrapped around the rail.

Clerve and Raoul kept themselves right close by, just in case -- but all Miss Bismarck did was give them a little nod, take a last rattling inhale, and release the bar. She held both her arms out against the air and disappeared. It was so sudden. There was no time to doubt.

Clerve and Raoul didn’t look down. They stared out into the space she had just inhabited, watching the void, barely hearing the soft _thud_ below that told them when it was over.

Raoul took a heavy breath. Clerve retrieved his cigarette and cupped his hand around the lighter as he relit it. They stood in companionable silence, ignoring the braying car horns before for the moment.

“I really must know,” Clerve said eventually. “You know that old joke about ‘switching the heads on one and two’? Have you ever had to do that to accommodate the sartorial niceties of the widow?”

“No, never,” Raoul replied dreamily. “But I have known some widows who were very particular about shoes.”

Clerve let out a stifled gurgle of a laugh. “We ought to be on our way, I’m afraid. The sooner the better.”

“Oh, yes. You through the front, I through the back.”

“I’ll take care of the chairs.”

“Thank you.” Raoul heaved a sigh. “She liked you very much, Empedocles, and there’s no doubt in my mind that this was what she wanted.”

Clerve looked streetwards at last. Ah, bless her. The old bird had flown after all. She was a couple of yards off from his calculations. Just like a lady to leave you guessing.

“You know,” Clerve said to Raoul, “I know a fantastic grief counselor.”


End file.
